In the northern tip of diamond shaped Middleton is a wonderful yet in ways a sad place that Stream Teamers and friends visit several times each year to view dramatic habitat changes and wildlife.

Last weekend, thanks to the welcome cold snap and the resulting long awaited ice, we visited it again.

In 1999 beavers built a substantial dam down drainage of Pond Meadow Pond. The impoundment formed behind it drowned more than 100 acres of “red” or “swamp” maples and Atlantic white cedars. By 2002 the cedars leafed out no more. The maples looked peaked. A few mature white pines among the maples were yellow instead of their usual dark green.

A couple of springs later great blue herons’ nests appeared high up in dead pines. More followed each spring; now there are over 40 stark gray stick piles perched against the winter sky in the pines still standing. Each year returning parents add to the nests.

Jim Berry, Ipswich ornithologist, told us that great horned owls will use a heron’s nest in winter and be gone with their young before the owners return to collect any rent. We haven’t seen owls yet in these nests; there are plenty of herons in season. This rookery is a favorite destination during noisy nesting times from April to late July.

Now it is quiet except when stiff breezes strum dead branches. The other day while enjoying and taking advantage of the cold, we walked the open “beaver meadow”, its liquid water sealed by three to six inches of ice beneath our soles. Only a few branchless-barkless maple trunks still stand Their one-time neighbors rot unseen in the muck below.

Decay resistant cedars, their long dead spiky branches more than a decade without leaves, still stand in thick groves. Some of us remember their healthy days when we walked under dense evergreen canopies with great difficulty due to fallen trees and hummocky sphagnum-covered wet ground. Even on sunny days it was dusky-dark.

On a pause during our recent hike to rest among leafless crowded trunks it was still somewhat dim. We know from a similar grove in Emerson Bog, now a reservoir, that the sun and time-bleached trunks of dead cedars may stand fifty years or more. From Route 114 across from Meritor Academy look west to see them, white fingers, reaching above the bog below another large rookery in live oak trees on skirting knolls. Cedars grow slowly; a one-foot diameter tree may be a hundred years old.

The highlights of our skateless slow shuffle on open ice were visits to two of the 45- pound impoundment-makers’ lodges. We marveled aloud at each, but were not greeted at either. The beavers seem imprisoned in their water world connected by two entrance tunnels below the ice to their apartments. We are told there may be a family of a half-dozen or more within. They snuggle on a floor a couple inches above the water of their entrances.

Page 2 of 3 - We wondered if they swam away on hearing us, especially when some rudely climbed up their roofs. One inverted cone-shaped lodge, 7-ft. high and 30-ft. in diameter, is as large as any of us had ever seen. It is dark with mud stucco applied this past fall. The peak of sticks has little mud, which allows for ventilation. Air and water vapor and CO2 of their respiration are exchanged. After storms, snow is soon melted above this vent. No odor at all emanates from their crowded apartment. Waste must be excreted outside in the water.

This large lodge, previously unseen by us, had been built on the base ruin of a lodge abandoned three or four years ago. Jim MacDougall, Ipswich River Watershed Association naturalist, told us that one of the chief reasons for lodge abandonment is the buildup of parasites.

This lodge and its predecessor are located on the edge of a quarter-mile long drainage ditch dug by farmers long ago. We know nothing for sure of the ditch’s history. It was probably dug to drain flanking wet meadows thus allowing horse access, perhaps to get hay, in late summer.

Beavers can swim in its now six-ft. deep water to their large dam 300 yards south or to relatively deep Pond Meadow Pond 200 yards north. Of course, their 1 to 4 feet deep vast impoundment allows below ice navigation in all directions where ice isn’t frozen to the bottom. We read they have air pockets in concavities they visit on the underside the ice allowing them to take long distance trips. Beavers are rarely seen in winter by us. Their large tracks are sometimes found in snow above the openly flowing water on the edges their dams.

Several patches of fish scales were found on the lodge roof where otters had defecated. The scales were sparkling in the afternoon sun. Otters use mounds above the water on which to eat their catches. Their tracks and slide marks are often seen in snow. They travel some distances going from pond to pond

You needn’t visit Middleton’s many impoundments to admire the work of beavers. These strange and interesting places are now found throughout the County and beyond. Just north of that described above is another large one in Boxford State Forest that stretches northeast almost to Middleton Road, Boxford. From Route I-95 going north several large flooded areas of dead trees are seen en route New Hampshire. Before venturing forth on them make sure the ice is safe; skirt it when in doubt. These places with large areas of shallow water are where one can find abundant wildlife. The beavers, back in large numbers after three centuries, do more good than harm. We and other animals are fortunate to have them.

*Danvers Water Filtration Plant, Lake Street, Middleton is the source for actual precipitation data. As of the 1/10/13 WC the reference 30 year monthly Normals have transitioned to the period 1981- 2010. All the new monthly Normals are higher than in the prior 1971- 2000 period except for January. Normals data is from the National Climatic Data Center.

** A beaver dam a quarter mile downstream from the USGS Gage has been causing invalid, thus unreleased gage reports.

*** Contains 0.3” estimated precipitation for the seven day period ending 1/29

THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team: www.middletonstreamteam.org or MSTMiddletonMA@gmail.com or(978-777-4584